If your list is full of fake or spammy email addresses, it can have a major impact on your business. Sign-ups from bots can lead to hard bounces, inflated growth metrics, and skewed cohort retention data that makes your product look worse than it actually is. This can have a ripple effect across all channels, including your sales funnels and CRM contacts.

There are several ways to spot a fake signup, but one of the easiest is to use a verification service. This tool can help you identify email addresses that are likely to be bots, and then remove them from your list. You can also use a double opt-in form that asks users to confirm their email address by clicking on a sent confirmation link – a simple feature that stops most bots in their tracks.

How to Detect Fake Signups Before They Cause Harm

Other ways to detect fake signups include checking for red flags like an unusually large number of new signups in a short period, or using a service like CleanTalk to check email addresses for signs of a bot (like gibberish strings of letters and numbers). You can also set up rate limiting on your signup forms, which will prevent multiple registrations from the same IP address or device in a given time frame.

Ultimately, fake and spammy signups are a silent threat that can cause serious damage to your business. Every signup carries a cost for your business, from sending emails to allocating storage, so you need to do whatever it takes to protect your lists.